Girl Genius talk:Manual of Style
Ooh, it's really taking shape. How very awesome. ~makes note of the DEFAULTSORT thing~ -Acacia 04:04, 5 March 2008 (UTC) Templates? Hey, you'd likely know the answer to this -- how are you lot inserting the Character and House template sidebars without copy&paste from another page? There's got to be an easier way.... Corgi 06:35, 5 March 2008 (UTC) Linkstyles Are we going with one particular link style over another? I noticed you changed a few embedded links to refs. I actually prefer references, as it looks a little cleaner and allows for more explanatory text, but I'm not particularly attached to either version. --mnenyver 14:49, 5 March 2008 (UTC) :I'd prefer to leave it as an either-or for right now. Once the MoS goes "public," this can be discussed. My feeling is that by that time, there will be enough articles using both link styles that it would be unnecessarily time-consuming to standardize on one. Incidentally, the ones I changed to refs weren't "embedded links" according to the standard, but rather references that had mistakenly used the "" Wikimarkup rather than "," which is to be preferred. -- that old bearded guy 03:55, 6 March 2008 (UTC) ::I had changed the tags to these kind, then they were changed to references, which is why I was confused. Anyways, no biggie. :) --mnenyver 04:19, 6 March 2008 (UTC) :: I've been using pagedate because most of the time either the text or the page speaks for itself - IMHO. Also, didn't want to think up witty captions. (Took me three tries to figure out all the pieces of a reference thingie, too, grrr.) :: Corgi 05:09, 7 March 2008 (UTC) :::The problem with using the and tags is that things that they delimit don't get indexed later among the references. Using the tag, by contrast, keeps all the references neatly indexed later on. (Incidentally, request you put your four squiggles as part of the paragraph you've just written, rather than in a new paragraph; that makes it easier to keep track of who's writing what comment.) -- that old bearded guy 05:17, 7 March 2008 (UTC) YAFQ (Yet Another Formatting Question) I noticed Mn. had put a stub template at the top of a page, whereas I've been putting it between the text and the categories - I thought I'd remembered Wikipedia doing it that way, more or less. Might we get a concensus on this, just for ease of consistency? I was thinking about putting this under the Help Desk in the Forums, but wasn't sure who might see it there (I haven't seen response to my Image question, for instance), or if it was appropriate. Would it be absurd to assume part of the Style Guide will be a general format to follow? I think I saw at least the beginnings of such in your Contents, yes? Corgi 05:09, 7 March 2008 (UTC) :Yeah, I wasn't sure either, and I thought I remembered seeing stub notices at the top. Template ordering should go in the style guide. --mnenyver 05:14, 7 March 2008 (UTC) ::I'll get to that; just started by making sure the character infobox is the first thing that appears. I'm off work tomorrow and will spend lots of the day getting stuff like this taken care of; thanks for pointing out the need for it. -- that old bearded guy 05:18, 7 March 2008 (UTC) ::: I suggest that the rule of thumb is that the tagger (who is typically the author) places it where she first notices that more material really ought to be added. If the whole article is deficient, it goes at the top. If the article starts out in good shape but peters out before really covering the subject, it goes in the middle or at the bottom if the problem is complete cessation. ⚙Zarchne 22:08, 19 November 2008 (UTC) Plural vs. singular in article titles I suggest that we make a rule that the official titles of ordinary articles be singular whenever possible — also recognizing that are generally to be pluralized. That is, "Category:Smoke Knights" or "Category:Knights of Jove" are category names into which members like Violetta or Lord Selnikov are respectively placed, while Smoke Knight or Knight of Jove is the correct name for the article which describes what one of these is. (We may also want to consider what then goes in the Category description vs the regular article.) Given that markup like Smoke Knights renders as "Smoke Knights", I think this is the Right Thing™, rendering many plural/singular redirection pages less necessary. (Less so in the case of titles with prepositional phrases like Knights of Jove, of course.) ⚙Zarchne 22:08, 19 November 2008 (UTC) :I would agree, but in both cases you cited, we're talking about groups, not the qualities that make up the individuals in that group. (ie. "Knights of Jove", the organization, vs a "Knight of Jove") Until we learn more about what a Knight of Jove is, there's no way to really describe a generic, individual member, hence the plural would be more apt. --mnenyver 04:34, 20 November 2008 (UTC) :: Well, what I'm suggesting is, even if we know nothing more about what makes a Smoke Knight a Smoke Knight than being a member of the Smoke Knights organization, which has the following collective goals, etc., from a naming convention and wiki markup point of view it is convenient to have the article named in the singular, so that you can say "Violetta is a Smoke Knight". However, I could be wrong, especially if we envisioned the need for both a singular and plural article, as the section on categories would seem to. I think (it would be generally agreed that, as with capitalization) it's a bad idea to have the names of two completely different articles differ only by a letter or two. ⚙Zarchne 02:55, 21 November 2008 (UTC) ::: Well, one can always redirect to the other. I guess it doesn't matter what the official article title is. I just happen to like title articles that are more narrative in style, as opposed to dictionary entries. "the Smoke Knights!" and "Zeetha, Daughter of Chump" as opposed to "Smoke Knight (n.)". I realize other people's preferences are just as valid. --mnenyver 04:06, 21 November 2008 (UTC) ::: Bluntly and probably offensively - this is silly. We're discussing groups. If you want to talk about an individual, use a pipe and link text. -- Corgi 02:56, 16 April 2009 (UTC) Article names Hy tink dot is much eazier to unnerstand. --mnenyver 16:32, 8 March 2008 (UTC) Feedback Looks good to me! I'd include it in both the Meta and Help categories as well as the Community Portal. (Which, looking at other wikis, I'm wondering if the CP page should be more focused on functioning as a local hub.) --mnenyver 16:49, 9 March 2008 (UTC) Seems pretty solid to me. I think I agree with all your conventions (although naming is still confusing for me). I think it provides a good feel for how to set things up, especially for characters. The Devide template is also useful. Do you want to mention the template for use with images? And we really should talk the Foglios about what level of image use they feel is appropriate. I, for one, like illustrating things, and I know it always makes an article prettier. But stepping on toes would be bad. I'll post more on the topic over on Wanted Images. Anyway, I think this is clear and well written. Good job! -Evaneyreddeman 18:04, 9 March 2008 (UTC) I came here to poke you over to my latest post on Forum:Watercooler, but I was just now reminded that you already planned on including Conflict Resolution in the guide, which helps me. :) --mnenyver 22:00, 12 March 2008 (UTC) Signing Articles Since we can see who made an edit by the "history" tab, we should not be putting signatures in the main body of an article. -- mnenyver 16:30, 18 June 2008 (UTC) :I certainly don't disagree — I only note that it's easier (especially psychologically) to remove (from a content article) an accidentally added sig than to add (as, in a talk page) an accidentally omitted one. — Zarchne 18:01, 18 June 2008 (UTC) Verb tense Currently, the section says present tense should be used, but nearly all articles use the past tense predominantly. So (if only to conform to the de facto standard) we should probably change the policy to something like this: * Present tense for current events ('Agatha is in Castle Heterodyne'), timeless statements ('Many monsters live in the sewers'), and discussion about the comic ('Girl Genius describes the adventures of…'). * Past tense for events that occurred in the past within the universe (''), dead people, etc. Ordinary 02:35, 27 November 2008 (UTC) :Yes, agreed. Good catch. --mnenyver 05:19, 27 November 2008 (UTC) Page numbers The latest version now says: : You may cite volume and page numbers from the published version of the comic if you wish. I'm not sure there is a consensus on this issue, and (if there is consensus) the statement needs clarification since both the web and paper versions are published versions. Page numbers for the web comics aren't very useful, since the link can be followed to see the comic. Page numbers to the bound, printed versions will be "corrected" by people who follow the link and see a different page number. The situation would be clarified if there was a note like "page number 17 in the printed version", but that would be annoying for inline links (but reasonable, I think, for footnoted references.) Argadi 08:52, 11 May 2009 (UTC) :I'll add a note saying "paper" version. It does no good to refer to page numbers for the online version, as it doesn't really help a reader locate that page. When trying to find a page online, we should stick to dates. Where are you seeing discrepancies between online and dead tree versions, by the way? --mnenyver 13:09, 11 May 2009 (UTC) :: He's right, there's quite a bit of variation. For instance, the inserted pages in Airship City to balance out the book-page count, that's an early example (albeit at the end). I was adding a little to the Vol. VI Chronology to try to help his work there, and there's a 4-page difference (although I'm not sure what caused it). -- Corgi 14:29, 11 May 2009 (UTC) ::: The difference is caused by the numbering of the front matter in the paper editions. Argadi 20:11, 11 May 2009 (UTC) :: The only pages that aren't different are the pages that don't have page numbers in the online version. For example, consider Volume VII. Before the page numbers between paper and on-line are four pages apart, after 47.5 they are 5 pages apart. The chronology page lists both forms of the page numbers. Argadi 17:26, 11 May 2009 (UTC) How does the current wording look? Better? --mnenyver 23:21, 11 May 2009 (UTC)